May 23

I decided today, since it was my day off, that I had 3 options.  Take nap, clean house, or go for a run.  I decided to go for a long run.  In the month I have been training for the half marathon, I haven't had a long run yet, partly due to being sick and partly due to trying to build up slowly.  I planned to go for about a 5 mile run.  I headed out and decided to go down towards the river and run to a couple nearby parks.  When I reached the first park, I had gone a little over a mile and decided to run up along the main road.  The main road has a bridge that goes over a river.  As I was running along the bridge, I saw a nice little path that went down along the river.  Looking at my watch, I had gone about 2 miles.  I decided to head towards the path, which to get to, I would have to go around and down to the river.  There was a path that headed towards the river but I decided to keep going and go through the park that goes by the river.  By the time I got down to under the bridge, I had gone about 3.5 miles.  I turned arund at that point, figuring I could either go back taking a couple shortcuts that would mean about a 6 mile total run or I could go back the way I came, turning it into 7 miles.  Well, I decided to go back the way I came, totaling 6.98 miles by the time I got home.  My average pace was 15.57, which I thought was pretty good, and I went over half the distance for the half marathon.  I feel pretty proud about myself right now.  There was a nice drizzle throughout my run, which helped keep me nice and cool.  I came house, took off my shoes and running clothes, and slipped into a comfortable sweatshirt, flip flops, and shorts and took my dog on a little cooldown walk.  Its so satisfying and encouraging to get that first long run out of the way!  Now I will probably take the next week easy since I have a 5K next weekend to do.  Now time to take my nap and hopefully clean house tommorrow.  I'm undecided about whether I would have been more productive if I had cleaned.  Probably less work, but not as much fun!